


Dead Language

by illegible



Category: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Canon, might involve ascianshipping if I add to it but for now it is gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-25 01:47:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20024524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illegible/pseuds/illegible
Summary: There was a time when they knew how to reach each other. Bracing for sacrifice, the unbroken three struggle with Terminus.





	1. Chapter 1

They see him weep once, and only once.

It happens in the silence after Therion, before Zodiark. There remain thirteen of them for a moment and they prepare themselves for the end.

If they can’t focus they will fail. If they fail now, nothing at all will remain.

Lahabrea had managed, somehow, to hold onto a notebook through everything. Standing above the world in flames, the four-faced corpse of fourfold death lies collapsed before them like a pipe organ. Like an angel. Like a nightmare that screamed and clawed and asserted itself as their end to paradise.

Lahabrea, who hurled spells without flinching or hesitating, somehow clung to his research. Maybe there is a small miracle in that, but his insistence reads almost childlike.

Elidibus had been the one to suggest they rest first. He did this in scarcely more than a whisper, expression empty. Unreadable behind the uniform of his mask. Smoke and blood had left him tattered as any of them, but save the muted way he spoke he seemed dignified as ever.

_What horrors rattle through his skull, I wonder?…_

Lahabrea sat hard, folding his legs beneath him. It made the black robes stretch in a way that might have been funny under other circumstances. He ordinarily took such care with posture. The orator read his book, reciting quickly and soundlessly and for no one but himself.

Watching, Hades caught the man as he stumbled over his own words.

Stopped.

Started again.

Hythlodaeus had been torn open. This killed him of course, but not right away. The body is a stubborn thing. Within an Amaurotine is pink and brown and yellow and gray and white and threaded in red torn into red overflowing red and all the sterile shades his friend clothed himself in fell away as he screamed as he begged and

and

it was a mercy to kill him, then.

Something numbed in the moment. Now, resting on the ground with his knees drawn to his chest, Hades’ face burns. Behind the roar of his own breathing there is another sound, hitching and discordant and awful, and it doesn’t stop when he strips the mask away.

He feels the others staring at him. Distantly he observes Lahabrea becoming more heated in his review to the point that it can only be a rebuttal.

It’s all gone. Fires blaze as they perch above their dying world, as Amaurot empties of every song every question every breath. The buildings and the people collapse together are ruined together and Hades knows, in this singular moment, that they did it to themselves. These horrors are theirs. The creations they kept inside their heads and quietly fed without admitting it. When you ignore the beast of an idea it grows and consumes you slowly, its living prey. Its doomed host. The inevitable corpse that will birth a thousand other terrors from where the worst laid its eggs.

And there’s no telling where _he_ is anymore. Their flown fourteenth. Likely dead, too.

Gray. Pink. Yellow. Brown. White. Red. Overrunning the color of the soul. Overrunning the beautiful fiction they’d made for themselves. This lived inside them all and so would they all die.

A body beside him, posture mirroring his own. An arm around his shoulder. Pulled close. Elidibus, the title encompassing a man, says nothing at all. He holds the sobbing creature that remains of Hades until gradually, he remembers that Emet-Selch belongs to him too.

He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t say thank you. But he stays for the time he needs, and when he stands his head is devoid of everything except the task that remains.


	2. Chapter 2

  
He sees them when his eyes shut. Parents and children. Friends and lovers. Strangers so moved by the sight of each other’s terror that their own became negligible in comparison.

Every one of them tried to make a difference. Emet-Selch stepped over the charred and mangled remains of his people who trusted him to keep them safe.

They trusted him.

In his failure all they could do was shield each other with their own bodies. It made no difference. All it meant was that their corpses would be found together.

There will never be enough time to remember everyone.

A mass grave. It’s the best they can manage with this number, with the tasks that remain. Lahabrea leads preparations on reflex and without consultation. A knot of survivors surrounds him, occasionally asks questions or raises concerns.

There is no water, no breeze. Every plant lies withered. Every monument scarred. The sky blazes red above them. Emet-Selch finds himself going through sensible motions in sensible ways as he walks through a nightmare that will vanish when he wakes.

He brings succor to the injured. He covers the departed. He assures each of them that Zodiark will right this atrocity. No more senseless sacrifice.

Elidibus watches closely. Elidibus who won’t scream in pain but only grits his teeth and uses that as incentive to work harder.

The Emissary steers him aside and, speaking low, tells him that they can handle this for the time being. Take ease.

As if he wouldn’t do his part.

As if he wouldn’t shoulder his responsibilities.

As if he would abandon them now.

Hades nearly strikes him, then. Elidibus doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t move at all.

He only waits for it to happen.

It is then that Emet-Selch realizes the man has been completely exhausted.

He shuts his eyes. He drops his arm.

“We will finish this together.”

***

When Lahabrea realizes the extent of Hydaelyn’s destruction, he is violently ill. He stares at the fragmented, animal wretches lost even to _language_ and cannot speak himself. The finest orator Amaurot has ever known trembles violently, his breathing harsh and uneven and far too fast.

Emet-Selch stares, and stares, and does nothing whatsoever besides. The scene is distant and his body only a shell wearing a mask.

Elidibus turns his back on them both and walks away. Out of sight, out of earshot. He doesn’t bother to explain himself.

The mortals don’t recognize them. They’re frightened. They scatter.

Emet-Selch sits in a mechanical gesture. The grass is new, as are the trees. Gray skies overhead promise rain. A paltry consolation bought with the blood of a multitude.

He wonders if Lahabrea is going to collapse and whether he ought to do something about it.

The sundered _things_ that remain of their bretheren prove bare and ignorant as babes. They do not read. They do not build. There is no magic to be found. They fight and they feed and they fuck and after not very long they will die.

What strangled sounds he hears come from Lahabrea. And then they are no longer sounds but curses, howling and ragged and furious and miserable. All of his eloquence channeled into indecipherable grief and rage.

Emet-Selch does not doubt that, were anything living to approach, the Speaker would destroy it and feel no better.

He rests his face in one hand, and leans forward, and waits.

***

“Look at me,” Lahabrea laughs, a hideous sound that rasps and grates at the edges, “no different from the rest of them. No different at all. How absolutely _pathetic_.”

“Are you done yet?” is all Emet-Selch can ask. The words ring hollow to himself. Lahabrea only continues to titter, shaking his head far longer than strictly necessary.

***

There is something terrifying in the disheveled manner of Elidibus’ return. His mask rests loose and low across his face. The cowl has slipped and what flesh can be seen has gone dull.

He does not hesitate but goes to Lahabrea, slides an arm under his shoulders and hoists him upright.

“There is a river not far from here” he says. “We can regroup and develop contingencies on the bank. Come.”

This utilizes the precise tone that might have scheduled meetings or rejected concepts. Emet-Selch can only watch as something wet and clammy and vile squirms through him, burrows into his gut to rot.

“Emet-Selch,” says Elidibus, his dedication to office jarring in the moment, “please. Help me.”

There will be time to process it all later.


End file.
